CFO is a community development charity which helps communities and individuals to identify issues that affect them and find their own solutions. We support and advise volunteer-led actions in Oxfordshire, helping hundreds of volunteers fulfil many roles in their communities. We support the principles of Asset-based Community Development. We think that stronger, more sustainable communities are built using the skills and gifts that people already have.
The values and practice of CFO are rooted in human rights, social justice, and respect for diversity. In our projects we seek to achieve inclusion, remove barriers to involvement, and challenge racism and discrimination.
CFO believes that equality and inclusion create strong, creative, and dynamic places to live and work. We have developed an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan to hold ourselves accountable to those values and allow for an ongoing appraisal of how they can be better embedded in CFO’s community work and working practices.
CFO Vision: Strong, diverse, inclusive, and thriving communities.
Mission: Supporting communities to find solutions to their planning, housing, social action, and service needs. Promoting positive change for all.
Asset-Based Community Development: ABCD is a bottom-up way of strengthening communities through recognising, identifying and harnessing existing ‘assets’ (i.e. things like skills, knowledge, capacity, resources, experience or enthusiasm) that individuals and communities have which can help to strengthen and improve things locally. Instead of looking at what a community needs or lacks, the approach focuses on utilising the ‘assets’ that are already there.